Online currencies
The world's most popular alternative currency, the bitcoin is used in online transactions by over 100,000 people worldwide. Any online company can choose to accept them, so bitcoins can buy video games, books and even socks! Bticoins are generated through "mining," a process in which computers run complex programs to record bitcoin transactions and keep the network secure.
Mining is regulated to produce the coins at a predictable, limited rate. This avoids creating too many bitcoins, which would decrease their value.
Other Internet users exchange stranger things, like hats from the video game Team Fortress 2. The hats were originally intended to make characters look distinctive. But players must pay for chances to find hats, and some unique ones are very rare. Thus, players trade hats among themselves for money, bitcoins or in-game items. Since people agree on the hats' value and trade them for other things, they arguably count as currency. By one extimate, items traded within the game are worth a total of US$22 million. That equals almost 60 percent of island nation Tuvalu's GDP!
Alternative currencies probably won't replace official ones, but they are changing society and economics.
Info Cloud
Here's a question for you friends, the word "internet" should it be capitalized or not?
Well, it's a place that people visit, and since place names are proper nouns, it should be capitalized right?
You would think, but now some writers are taking a different view on the word. They're saying the internet has become so common that it no longer warrants the capital 'I'.
Some prestiges publications, like the Economist and the Times of London, have already demoted the word "internet" from proper noun to common noun, now spelling it with a lower case 'i'.
So, how would we know when we should do the same?
When stylebooks tell us. Stylebooks are the accepted standard for proper English writing. They uphold conventional usage, yet they're flexible too, as is reflected in their annual updates and edits.
Part dictionary, part encyclopedia, and part textbook, stylebooks tell us things like the difference between a "robbery" and a "burglary", which words are politically incorrect, and when you should spell out numbers.
Check the bookstore or the internet for English styleguides like the "Chichago Manual of Style" or the "Associated Press Stylebook". If you're serious about English writing, they're essential.
Language Lab
transaction n.
trans- prefix: on or to the far side of something [= across]
a business deal or action, such as buying or selling something
- The stock transaction is now under investigation.
- The procedure of a loan transaction is carefully monitored.
predictable adj.
if something or someone is predictable, you know what will happen or what they will do - sometimes used to show disapproval
predict v.
to say that something will happen, before it happens
- The film was full of predictable plots, but it was still very popular.
unpredictable adj.
changing a lot so it is impossible to know what will happen
- unpredictable weather
distinctive adj.
dis- prefix opposite or absence of
having a special quality, character, or appearance that is different and easy to recognize
- Her distinctive taste made her the top stylist in the field.
- Many fans love the singer's distinctive voice.
arguably adv.
/ˈɑɚgjuwəbli/
it can be argued — used to say that a statement is very possibly true even if it is not certainly true
- Picasso is arguably one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
- Arguably, the vaccine should not be accessible to the public yet.
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